Stefan!
Anselm Kiefer German
Not on view
Stefan George (1868–1933), whose head emerges here from the top of a tall peak, was a poet whose later works deplore the absence of heroism and condemn what he perceived to be the evils of contemporary life. Despite this Nietzschian interest in the will to power, George was repulsed by National Socialism and died in self-imposed exile in Switzerland. Nonetheless he was subsequently embraced by the Nazis as a national literary hero—an example of their exploitation of a German cultural figure for their own purposes. Stefan! shows Kiefer's interest in redeeming such figures from the ignominy of exploitation while at the same time pointing to the charged complexities of German cultural heritage.
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